How to Get Started as a Freelance Social Media Manager

If businesses want to thrive they need to cultivate an online presence across various platforms in order to get noticed, reach and interact with customers. As the demands associated with online marketing become greater and harder to meet, businesses are increasingly turning to Social Media Managers to help them boost their online presence and reach their target audiences. Social Media Managers can help businesses with content marketing, public relations, customer service, social media strategy, and community growth and management. A few of the tasks Social Media Managers need to perform in order to achieve their clients online marketing goals are: setting up profiles, scheduling social media updates, sourcing content to share, responding to customers, reporting on traffic & growth and more.

A good Social Media Manager has excellent grammar, stellar research skills, is great at customer service and excels at time management. They should report success and failures while always remaining professional. It is Social Media Manager’s job to maintain a consistent voice for their client’s brand. If you think that social media management sounds like the right profession for you, here are some steps you can take to become the next in-demand Social Media Manager:

Learn the Ropes

There’s more to social media management than just being able to get followers, you need to know how to market. The most obvious way to learn marketing is to get a degree in communications or marketing, but self-directed study and hands-on learning is also a viable option. If you don’t have the time or money to get a degree, check out the wealth of online courses available on sites like udemy and skillshare. You’ll want to learn about SEO and social media analytics, as well as good storytelling, content creation and how to engage with the community.
While you’re studying marketing don’t forget to look at some real-life sources of inspiration, you can follow brands you admire to learn from them and even look for opportunities to work with them in the future.
Having to divide your time between your day job and learning all the skills needed to be an effective Social Media Manager will help you develop one more skill that is incredibly important: how to organize your schedule. Social Media Managers need to keep on top of numerous time-sensitive tasks and the better you are at time-management, the better you’ll be at social media management.

Build a Following

Before you can work for clients you need to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing as a Social Media Manager, you can start by building your own following and promoting your own business’s brand. Start looking for social media opportunities everywhere and remember you’re always being watched, even on your personal accounts, so practice building a strong consistent voice. Do not forget that everything you put out on the internet is out there forever so don’t post anything you wouldn’t want future clients to see.

Set up your Business

You need a place for potential clients to find you and learn about all the services you have to offer, so once you’re committed to becoming a Social Media Manager you need to set up a website for your business. You’ll want to decide on what rates you’ll charge and have information about your pricing available on your website. It is also a good idea to develop a charging strategy to present to clients, such as: “For (dollar amount), I will post your content (X) times a day, and relevant content/industry info (Y) times a day and I will do (other services). “ If you design service packages to offer clients it will make hiring you easier because they’ll know exactly what to expect.

Find Clients

When you’re first starting out businesses might be reluctant to hire you if you have no experience, so look for volunteer opportunities involving social media with non-profit organisations, your school, community culture centers, or youth sports-clubs etc. You can also find work with multi VA firms in order to get your foot in the door and build your resume. Once you build up your portfolio a little bit, you can start pitching and attending conferences and meetups relevant to the industry you would like to work in. Now’s the time to start asking for referrals and consider guest posting on B2B sites to get your name out there and have more work to put in your portfolio.

Deliver Results

Once you start working as a Social Media Manager, whether in a volunteer capacity or for clients you need to deliver on your commitments and keep track of your results. It is important that you are able to provide proof to your clients that you are a valuable asset, plus you need to be able to give feedback on strategies. If clients are unable to see how you are helping them, they are not likely going to continue to employ you.

Keep Learning

The world of social media moves fast and Social Media Managers need to stay on top of the latest platforms, engage in best practices, and stay informed about policy changes. You have to keep up-to-date and remain innovative in order to bring new ideas and strategies into action.

Good luck with your quest in becoming a fantastic Social Media Manager! Our clients are always on the lookout for great Social Media Managers that can deliver measurable results, if you think you are ready to help their businesses get noticed, be sure that they can find your profile on SageGroupy by keeping it updated.

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